Goddamn, I don't even know what to say. This is an absolute load-bearing post for me now, I'm saving it to reread multiple times, and you are a legend. Thank you so much for your kind and wise advice.

I think if you get the chance it's gonna be really worth drilling down into this and articulating it with the psych.

Agreed, definitely agreed. I once brought up ASD during a session with my former therapist, in that kind of joking but not joking kind of way, like "sometimes I think I'm on the spectrum, ha-ha". She agreed with me on that, but disagreed even a bit brusquely when I brought up how I identified with ADHD symptoms and behaviors. I felt like she was aggressively against an ADHD diagnosis, and made it seem like she expected someone with ADHD to just get up and leave in the middle of a session, or to altogether forget it, or some other cartoonishly oblivious Mr. Magoo-ass behavior.

I don't know what her experience tells her, but I now look back and disagree with her assessment. Maybe she became skeptical due to that ADHD diagnosis wild west you mentioned in your comment, but I still remember that her reaction made me feel very deeply invalidated, like some kind of terminally online kid (which I'm absolutely not, trust me). I'll talk about ASD with whoever my new therapist/psychiatrist might be, but I'll take it slow - I don't want to get stonewalled again.

you might be in that category yourself which might explain your Ritalin-in-10-mins-or-your-money-back experience?

Lol I don't think so. This was a psychiatrist referred by my health insurance, and the closest cultural reference that I can think of would be of a doctor who worked out of a dingy office in a strip mall in the US. Real Saul Goodman vibes. The whole thing simply felt off. Literally the only thing I said was that I was anxious, and he gave me Ritalin, without asking any further questions or even telling me what it was gonna do to my brain, lmao

It's like being trans - cis people really don't entertain the thought of what it would be like and feel like and look like and what sort of clothes they'd wear and what name they'd pick for themselves and... you get the idea, right?

I do, yeah. I had never thought of it this way, and it absolutely makes sense. I would have fun with the idea for a few moments, and that's the whole extent of it.

Funny story, a friend shared one of these silly personality quizzes in our group chat a couple weeks ago. It was just some stupid classic Buzzfeed-style slop, and we started chatting about personality and IQ tests and whatnot. I went all "you call that a knoife?" and sent them the RAADS-R, lol, and they all treated it like a funny little thing, we talked a bit about it and that was it. None of them ever mentioned it again, but it had been on my mind before that moment (I had done it some time before) and it has been on my mind since then (I did it again later, with results similarly very well within ASD numbers).

I read about it, I did other tests, and I think about this stuff all the time. Like I said, my former therapist pushed me away from even thinking about ADHD three years ago, which led me towards eventually reading up on bipolar II and thinking that was what was happening to me. I just wanted answers. Surely this can't be as good as it gets, etc.

I no longer believe that I'm bipolar. I'm still on lithium, but now I'm not even sure that it's doing anything for me aside from making me feel tired and also making it very difficult to take a shit regularly. I thought my impulsivity was hypomania. I no longer believe that either. I thought long stints of getting fuckall done were depression cycles. Once again, I don't think that's the case anymore. These things are slightly muted by the lithium, but still there.

I mean, ultimately you're going into this to try and understand yourself better and to arrive at the truth about who you are/what condition(s) you have, so if you approach it from that perspective with a healthy degree of skepticism and openness and honesty then you're gonna be totally fine.

Agreed. Back to the thing with my friends and the RAADS-R, one of them was actually trying to kind of dissuade me, even reassure me that it's nothing, it's just a test, it doesn't mean I'm autistic. The thing is, he was talking to me as if I had just posted a picture of an MRI showing a lump in my brain or something, like "surely it's nothing to worry about". I told him that this is not going to change who I am. If I'm truly autistic, then it's just another way to understand myself. It's not a disease, it's a door that might lead into a path of healing and reconciliation with an estranged part of who I am.

Once again, thank you enormously for your words. I'm not exaggerating when I say that your comment really made a difference to me. Much love, comrade!